Rugs inspired by bacteria and an armchair made up of huge furry tendrils are two new works being showcased by the Campana brothers' at their solo show at Giustini/Stagetti gallery in Rome.
The Brazilian duo Humberto and Fernando Campana have designed two new collections for the gallery that will be debuted over two exhibitions at the Gallery. The first, called Notturno #1, runs until November 24 2018, while Notturno #2 is scheduled for next year.
The Morbido armchair, Bacteria carpets and Bacteria lamps are on show as part of Notturno #1.
The two-tone Bacteria carpets, created in collaboration with carpet brand Nodus, are hand-knotted from wool and banano silk. Their unusual swirling shapes recall microbial cultures under a microscope.
The series of Bacteria lighting fixtures feature similar swirling patterns which have been used to make perforated shades from brass sheets.
The Morbido armchair, which translates into English as morbid, was designed to "celebrate the primitive value of the sense of touch". Perched on four resin legs, a crop of oversized upholstered tendrils fall over the seat of the chair nodding to the duo's previous hairy designs, which are often made out of overlapping outlandish elements such as furry eyes, 500 metres of rope, or dangling lengths of raffia.
"Here, the assembly and overlapping of heterogeneous elements - recurring in the production and aesthetics of the Campana brothers - takes on a new, extremely essential and abstract aspect, to enhance the idea of a wraparound object and to celebrate the primitive value of the sense of touch," said the gallery of the new armchair.
The designers said that the new collections serve as an investigation into their combined creative processes which are driven by the diverse mixture of cultures, language and architecture that coexist in their home city of Sao Paulo.
"Sao Paolo is a cubist city, a city full of overlapping stories that become entangled and it is in my efforts to abstract the urban landscape and its three-dimensional sequences that my designs come into being," explained Fernando Campana.
"The inspiration may be a dream by night, or perhaps a nightmare, that can disappear in an instant like a glance, like the light of the sun on a building, he added. "I draw with total freedom, quickly, so as to loose nothing I have imagined, then contact with materials dictates what we must do," he added.
The exhibition is completed by a series of drawings by Fernando in metallic ink – one is a series of interwoven spirals and stripes while the other depicts two intertwined furry figures.
"This new project intends to investigate the creative process of the two designers, each of whom is motivated by personal insight and research," said the gallery. "These latest works inaugurate a new phase of investigation aimed at deepening the hypnotic power of a repeated gesture and optical illusionism of a graphic sign, developed both on two-dimensional surfaces and on three-dimensional volumes."
Previous projects have seen the Brazilian brothers apply their distinctive style to everything from shoes and a bag for Camper to a house in their native Sao Paulo which the duo covered in palm fibre to give it a hairy exterior.